Bush Officials Condoned Regional Iraqi Oil Deal

The Bush administration told Hunt Oil officials, a Texas based oil company with close ties to President Bush, that they did not object to it's efforts to secure an oil deal with the Kurds, despite the fact that they were doing so without any oil deal existing between US companies and the central Iraqi government.

Last fall, after the deal was announced, the State Department said that it had tried to dissuade Hunt Oil from signing the contract with Kurdish regional authorities but that the company had proceeded "regardless of our advice." Although Hunt Oil's chief executive has been a major fundraiser for President Bush, the president said he knew nothing about the deal.

Yesterday, however, Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, released documents and e-mails showing that for nearly four months, State and Commerce department officials knew about Hunt Oil's negotiations and had told company officials that there were no objections. In one note, a Commerce Department official even wished them "a fruitful visit to Kurdistan" and invited them to contact him "in case you need any support."

That guidance contradicted the administration's public posture.

The company's chief executive, Ray L. Hunt, was not only a major backer of Bush but also a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which makes White House claims that they knew nothing of this, extremely doubtful.

These deals, especially deals made with the Kurds, undermine the entire Iraqi government which does not recognise Kurdish autonomy and have led to about a dozen other companies making deals directly with the Kurds, further undermining the central governments authority.

All of this is taking place without any Iraqi oil law, a law which the Bush administration have been pushing for for the past year and which the Iraqi government have been resisting.

The release of the documents comes as the administration is defending help that United States officials provided in drawing up a separate set of no-bid contracts, still pending, between Iraq’s Oil Ministry in Baghdad and five major Western oil companies to provide services at other Iraqi oil fields.

In the no-bid contracts, the administration said it had provided what it called purely technical help writing the contracts. The United States played no role in choosing the companies, the administration has said.

Disclosure of those contracts has provided substantial fuel to critics of the Iraq war, both in the United States and abroad, who contend that the enormous Iraqi oil reserves were a motivation for the American-led invasion — an assertion the administration has repeatedly denied.

As Noam Chomsky famously said, it is very hard to imagine that the US would have invaded Iraq if it's main export had been lettuces, and as we watch US oil companies fall over themselves to make oil deals with anyone who will make them, even if they are making them outside of the Iraqi government, then this only heightens the feeling that we are watching the victors fighting over the spoils.

And that feeling is further underlined when one realises that, despite what they are saying in public, that the US government is actually encouraging such behaviour. It appears that they will undermine the central government's authority in a second if it means US oil companies might get their sticky hands on Iraq's black gold.

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Tags: Hunt Oil, Bush, Bush administration, Iraq, Iraq Oil Law